Leadership and management: key differences and applications

Leadership vs. Management

It has often been said that a manager is what one does, and a leader is who one is. The leading theorists who are studying management and leadership have a myriad of studies that support this contention of leadership being more inherently linked to who a person is (Fitzgerald, Schutte, 2010). From my experiences, this is certainly the case. The best managers are much like technicians who know how to orchestrate people, processes and systems to gain the greatest level of performance. Leaders on the other hand can infuse such a strong belief in a goal or mission that one is readily willing to give their all in its accomplishment

(Schmidt, 1993). The intent of this analysis is to describe the differences between leadership and management using examples from actual experiences. Second the circumstances when management is critical as part of leadership are also discussed as are the most important traits of effective management vs. leadership.

Assessing The Differences Between Management and Leadership

Leaders have the ability to infuse an entire organization with a strong sense of purpose and share responsibility for its shared or collective vision being attained. The most transformational leaders have an innate ability to create organizations that are agile enough to respond to market threats yet strong and resilient enough to overcome massive change. In short, a transformational leader has a very strong foundation of trust to build on over time which in turn unifies the entire team as well (Schmidt, 1993). From personal experiences it is also readily evident that transformational leaders also have the ability to create a shared sense of sacrifice for a common, shared, exciting, challenging goal (Singh, Krishnan, 2008). Leaders have a series of traits that make people want to excel for them, they have an innate ability to engender trust, support and transparency by telling the truth. They also have a very strong focus on creating value in the organization and are willing to sacrifice personally to see objectives attained (Singh, Krishnan, 2008).

A manager is one that excels at the orchestration of planning, organizing, leading and controlling, and has the ability to use several different sources of power to ensure compliance to their requirements (Schmidt, 1993). Managers are by nature more focused on maintaining the status quo of an organization and rarely are called upon to define strategic vision and mission statements that leaders must be excellent at in order to transform organizations (Fitzgerald, Schutte, 2010). An excellent manager is one that can sense through Emotional Intelligence (EI) which specific strategy will be best used for a given situation (Schmidt, 1993). They are also excellent at being able to manage resources effectively under very tight constraints.